Director’s Statement: The novel THE SHELTERING SKY is what inspired me to first go to Morocco. The author, Paul Bowles, was still alive then, and I was able to meet him in Tangier. He explained Morocco is about movement. Not arriving at any certain place at any certain moment. The journey is the experience.
I set out on my own, following his path, from Tangier, across the Riff mountains, through Fez and eventually into the Sahara Desert. The trip had a profound effect on many things I would do in my life, including living in Morocco.
More than twenty-five years later, I set out to retrace my original path, to see if the magic of the experience was still there. This is the film. We filmed as we journeyed and recorded what we experienced. Every situation is real. The people are real. Most things had not changed. Morocco has a great way of moving forward in time, while ignoring modernization as a passing fad or simply interpreting it with its own inventive sense of humor.
Still to this day, upon landing in Morocco, the sound of the minaret broadcasting through the medina immediately erases one from where they had come, and the urge to follow those sounds deeper… still exists. Morocco has always been that to me, my home, my source of inspiration, my muse in ways unexplained, and my guide into the perpetual unknown.